Mallick: Queen’s Park would rather fight than tax

Better to raise taxes than to allow human blood sports in Ontario

If you were taken aback by Queen’s Park going into the online gambling business, wait for the human blood sport that goes by the coy name of “mixed martial arts.”

On the weekend, the government, each day sounding more like a Tony Soprano asking for his “taste,” let the news slip, hoping no one civilized would notice. The minister of Consumer Services, of all people, got stuck with announcing it. And next year, Ontario will be counting worn, stained $5 bills from a very rum audience while in the ring, young men naked but for shorts and fingerless gloves will be turning their flesh to jam.

The horrendous injuries are compiled online by weird fans. If you enjoy popped kneecaps, shattered dangling forearms, and legs gone soft and twisted like unbaked bread sticks, then maximum fighting is your new beach volleyball.

The money’s good, no question. The Star reports that the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which has long lobbied to bring the “sport” to Ontario, hauled in $1.56 million in ticket sales for a recent event in Oakland, Calif. The province would get two per cent of that. It is claimed that a big show could bring in $6 million in economic activity.

One would think that paying for medical repairs to combat sportsmen would cancel provincial profits, but Premier McGuinty, marketing the latest in shame-based revenue generation, presumably costed the injuries to the kind of people, probably Tim Hudak voters, he is unlikely to court or consort with.

There seems to be no form of depravity Queen’s Park will not license to avoid raising taxes. The notion that taxation is government robbery rather than the price we pay to maintain the province we live in comes from the American right. McGuinty seems terrified that the sentiment has drifted across the border like a rage cloud, but I think he’s wrong.

Ontarians are sensible. We know taxation is simply a means to an end. Many voters would prefer higher taxes to seeing life in Ontario turn into a Mickey Rourke movie set in Oklahoma. I don’t think people fear tax levies as much as they fear destitution, and that will come from unemployment and illness, as any human interest story will tell you. Then you’ll need help from the government you elected.

Is legalizing pot the next step? No, there’s a moral case to be made for that so McGuinty will shun it.

There’s always homemade provincial porn. Other entities are doing it, as the satirical newspaper The Onion has already reported: “Illinois does a few adult films to make ends meet.” I don’t judge that straitened state nor should I judge Ontario, poor deluded rural girl, for going over to the seedy side to pay for bits and bobs like public health departments, highway sealants, artificial hips and whatever reeves are.

But I suspect our porn wouldn’t be very good, a lift-your-flannel-nightgown version of the butter tarts that made this province famous. Our Debbie Does Gananoque, In and Out of Muskoka, The Golden Horseshoe and even the more explicit Golden Horseshoe II would be too tame for the adult channels on your local cable, which are harsh, badly lit and traumatic to watch. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I don’t want hopeless, hapless men to bankrupt their families by gambling online nor some failed fighter to spend the rest of his life with a crumbled spine because a prime minister, premier or mayor couldn’t find the courage or common sense to raise taxes.

But because three levels of government thought taxpayers were as stingy and cowardly as they were, we will now extract the money from the hot, sweaty struggles of the poor.

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